Archive for December, 2005
Protected: Time passes too slowly…
Boat Journey
Yesterday my family and I set forth on an epic voyage from Scarborough Marina to Pumicestone Passage; the body of water that separates Bribie island from the mainland of Australia.
My dad has a tidy old fisherman’s trawler which has over time been converted for private use. The previous owner had started this project but grew too old before he finished it. Consequently the boat sat unused in a dingy estuary under some trees for quite a while. Although when dad first got it, it looked like an extroadinarily large piece of driftwood. However, the structure of the boat was solid; the hull didn’t have any holes, and only leaked the correct amount; the wheel house although off by a few degrees in the rear doorway was otherwise solid, and the inside walls had already been done up nicely; below deck, the forward bunks were a little smelly though otherwise usable, and the engine worked, mostly.
Since dad got it, he’s spent some large sums of money on it, and turned it into a comfortable cruiser perfectly suitable for the small holiday we had on it yesterday. It’s had its engine replaced (it now sports a large-capacity turbo diesel producing some 60Kw, and mountains of torque) and had other various bits and pieces installed, such as a fish-finder/radar, GPS sat-nav, and various electronic bits to make it a modern boat.
So we set off earlyish in the morning, around 8AM. The journey we made to Pumicestone Passage looked something like this (992×856 JPEG, 251kB). Our intended destination was Mission Point, somewhere a few kilometres further from the end of the red line. Sadly though we never made it. We travelled approximately 60 kilometres in total, at an average speed of approximately 7 knots (just under 23Km/h), and after all our tooling around, we’d been steaming along for about six hours or so. Bear in mind, six hours is not the total time it took to traverse the distance of the red line — the red line is merely indicative of our approximate path. Once we were inside Pumicestone passage, we travelled around a lot.
It took maybe two hours to traverse the distance indicated on the satellite image. About half an hour out of Scarborough marina, we started to smell smoke. We thought little of it initially, supposing it was a bushfire off over the horizon somewhere. After a while more of travelling, we started to see the smoke as well as smell it — thinking now that something may be wrong, dad and I jumped below deck to check out the engine, and spotted nothing. The compartment was filled with smoke, though we could see no source for it. While being displeased with the futility of our search, we shrugged it off yet again. There were no flames… can’t be too bad then, I suppose was the mentality.
After another short while, dad started checking at the rear of the boat. He opened the rear compartment where the steering arms for the rudder, exhaust pipe exit, and other storage areas are kept. There were crab pots leaning up against the exhaust pipe, and the nylon rope of the pots had melted onto the insulated exhaust pipe. We figured this was the source of the burning smell and the smoke. We were still somewhat puzzled though, as the smoke had a wood-smell to it, not that of burning plastic/nylon.
We left that compartment open and travelled along for a while longer to let the smoke escape. Though it was escaping, it was not abating: in fact, the volume of smoke coming from inside the boat was on the increase. Dad had enough and jumped down into the back of the boat one more time. By this point in time, an hour and a half had elapsed since the initial search for the source. This time, while having a good look around underneath the back deck, dad bobbed his head down and looked toward the exhaust pipe outlet. He realised he could see the water. Immediately obvious was the fact that this isn’t right, so dad got up out of the compartment and leant over the side of the boat to take a look. Sure enough, there was a hole in the side of the boat. A big hole.
What had happened we are still unsure of. What we do know though, is that for three quarters of our journey, the wooden planks surrounding the metal exhaust outlet had been slowly smoldering away. This explained the smoke underside of the deck, and the woody burning smell. We had to stop immediately. Dad called his mate that we were journeying with, who came over in his dinghy to take a look. The both of them were completely perplexed as to how this might’ve happened. Several phonecalls later to other mates who are knowledgeable with boats, and nobody could really come up with an explanation as to why, all of a sudden, the boat had started smoldering.
During conversation dad made mention of the fact that this exhaust system had been with the boat since before he owned it. He’s owned it for the past four years, and taken it out on many boating expeditions much longer than the short two hour cruise we’d just made. My hypothesis is that perhaps the wooden planks had gotten so old and brittle that the heat of the exhaust was enough to start them burning. Of all my dad’s years of boating experience, and experience with his fathers and uncles boats of similar design, he has never seen anything quite this bizzare happen before.
Suffice to say, he was highly annoyed. As it was now mid-afternoon and the wind had picked up, it would’ve been dangerous to venture back home, as higher waves could’ve easily splashed into the hole; its width approximately 30cm, and itself being positioned just 30cm above the waterline. We anchored and stayed the night in a sheltered area.
After the excitement of that escapade, anything else I have to say may not be so interesting, so if you’re still with me, you may want to take a short break before you continue reading.
In between anchoring and discovering the hole, my dad’s prized straw hat had blown off and fallen into the water. After we anchored, Brett, Kirsten and I decided to mount a search mission and got into the dinghy. After we pottered around the immediate area and within a 500m radius, we saw no sign of the hat. Presumably the straw had absorbed too much water and sunk. Giving up, we turned back to the boat, and headed in its direction. Unfortunately for us, the outboard motor on the dinghy decided to stop turning over, and promptly sputtered to a halt. I didn’t think much of it and tried to start the motor. Nothing. Over and over I tried. So out the oars came, and Brett and I attempted to row to safety.
Unfortunately for us, Brett and I are crap at rowing. Though we managed to get the timing right, my strokes were always more powerful than his. Consequently we ended up turning in one direction all the time; there wasn’t much we could do about this, for if I rowed any less harder, the wind and current would’ve blown us away anyway. Fortunately though, dad had presumably spotted us in peril, and asked his friend if he could come to our rescue. So out he pottered in his own little dinghy and towed us to safety.
Aside from those two things there isn’t much more to say about the journey other than high-density foam on top of plywood is dreadful to sleep on. Combined with the fact that I was up at first light (4:55AM), and at 1:44PM as I write this, I’m starting to feel tired already. It’s not even mid-afternoon yet!
You can find a gallery with all the photos taken over the course of the journey here.
Hope you had fun reading!
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